Gathering Dark by Candice Fox (best life changing books txt) 📕

the sweat beading at my temples. “I’m just here to see if my friend—if a person who I think may be missing—has been reported as such. That’s all.”

“Dayly Lawlor is your friend?”

My heart was hammering. I wondered if he could see my jugular ticking. “No. I don’t know her.”

“You just said she was your friend. Are you avoiding saying she’s your friend because she’s a criminal, too? You have particularly strict parole conditions, Ms. Harbour. I’m sure you’ve been made aware of those. They specifically state that interactions with anyone who has been convicted of a—”

“I know,” I said. I needed to take back control of the conversation. Interrupt him. He didn’t like it. His jaw twitched.

“When was the last time you saw Ms. Lawlor?”

The Pump’n’Jump. The gun in her hand. The blood on her fingers.

“I’ve never seen her,” I said. “I’m telling you Dayly Lawlor is not a friend. I’ve never met her. She’s related to someone I know.”

“Someone you know? Who?”

“Just a person.”

“Tell me their name.”

“I don’t have to do that.”

“So you’re just here checking on the missing person report of someone you don’t know and have never met.” He nodded slowly, smirked at an empty corner of the room as though he was so used to sharing a smirk with his partner that he did it even when they weren’t there. “Ms. Harbour, I’m going to ask you now, are you currently under the influence of any drugs?”

My mind leaped ahead, sizzled and snapped through a series of horrific visions. A drug test. A formal interview while we waited for results. A call to my parole officer. A call to Sasha and Henry from McAuley at the front desk, telling them to come get Jamie, that I was going to be detained for an undetermined amount of time due to a sudden unfolding of circumstances on which he could not elaborate. The thought pressed again that the only person who was going to get me out of this room was myself. The way I had got myself out from under the gaze of the robber’s gun two days earlier, the way I had talked and schemed and lied my way out of rapes, assaults, and shankings in prison a million times across the decade I had been inside.

Take back control.

“I’m leaving now.” I stood up.

“No, you’re not.”

The man had me before I saw him move. He was out of his chair, his hard hand twisting my right forearm and locking it into my back. I smacked against the cold concrete wall, my head, my ribs, my hips. We stopped. His hands were on my wrist and my shoulder. Our breaths were hard. That was something to focus on. That was a clue. Hot breath. Agitated. Why was he agitated? I waited to be read my rights, but he said nothing.

Because he was thinking.

I realized I had a chance. “I want my lawyer,” I said.

“You don’t—”

“Lawyer, lawyer, lawyer,” I said. “Now. Right now.”

“You don’t need a fucking lawyer.” He pulled my wrist away and shoved my hand into the wall, then lifted my other arm and flung it upward. “I’m going to conduct a routine body search for weapons or other restricted items.”

I closed my eyes, held the wall, and prepared to be briefly sexually assaulted. The camera was on us, but I was sure he’d do as the guards in Happy Valley had done more times than I could remember—reach too high, too deep, linger for too long. He didn’t. The man swept his hands over my clothes and pulled me off the wall, jabbed me in the shoulder to get me to move toward the door.

“Get going,” he said.

I walked stiffly back the way we had come. In time I looked behind me and realized he wasn’t following. I walked faster, and hit the door to the foyer at a jog. Jamie was slumped in the chair I had put him in, his Nintendo upright on his chest, thumbs dancing on the buttons. I yanked him up and walked fast with him out of the building toward the car.

“What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I told him, laughing too loud. “Where the hell did you get that Nintendo? Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. What a sneaky kid.”

“Are you okay? You’re all red.”

“It’s hot. We’re just late, that’s all. Gotta get you home or we’ll be in trouble.”

Trouble. I breathed the word, hardly able to give it sound. My head was throbbing, hands shaking as I opened the car door. Wet handprints on the steering wheel. It took me longer than it should have to figure out what I was supposed to do with the keys in my hand, where I’d even got them. Jamie was watching me, the Nintendo playing looping music, bouncing sounds. We sat in silence while I tried to remember how to put the car in reverse.

“Hey!” he said in time. I looked over. He was smiling, pointing through the windshield. I followed his aim and saw Detective Jessica Sanchez walking across the street before us toward her car, her gaze bent to her phone, a thick binder of papers under her arm. The sight of the woman who had arrested me for murder sent a bolt of pain through my chest.

“That’s her. My new neighbor,” Jamie said.

I looked at him, then back at Sanchez, who was pulling open the door of her Suzuki, her black hair caught in the hot afternoon wind. I let my hands fall into my lap.

“Motherfucker,” I said.

Jamie laughed.

I walked to a quiet street five minutes from Jamie’s house after dropping him off, sat down on a low brick gate outside someone’s house. My fingers were trembling as I tried to dial. I didn’t even look at the numbers, just listened to the tune they played. The phone rang three times as I tried to regulate my breathing.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” I swallowed. My mouth was bone dry. “My name is Blair, and I need someone to talk to.”

There was the usual pause. A